#$ Mozart Die Zauberflote Blu ray

This is one of the best Magic Flute performances out there. However, I feel like it could have been even better. So I'm giving it four stars.



First, the singers. Damrau is a top notch Queen of the Night. She gives us a dramatic and overbearing Queen of the Night here, someone who can be manacing even when she is on your side. I am not completely happy with this interpretation. In my opinion, in the first aria (Zotto), the Queen of the Night should be tender and vulnerable like a typical fairy queen in distress. By adding a lot of manace to her here, in my opion, Damrau undermines the dramatic surprise later when the Queen turns nasty in her second aria. I still think she is the best Queen alive, but I wish she didn't take it quite over the top.



I'll have to disagree with DeGeorge's quite excellent review here, I felt that Roschmann's Pamina was really weak. Her voice sounded thin to me and overall she seemed to be struggling to add her emotion to the pieces. Her lament aria and suicide aria did nothing for me in this rendition, and they are some of my favorites!



Selig's Sarasato was good. The problem I have is that I find Sarasato just a boring character. He's a bundle of abstract virtues and have very little human characteristic to related to. Mozart tried but couldn't quite get him to be a human. I personally haven't seen an exciting Sarasato and for this reason I don't think there can be an exciting Sarasato.



Keenlyside's Papageno was delightful and very convincing. He appears to have injured his left hand in the middle of performance (cramp? Not sure) but soldiers through until the end. It could be distracting if you notice it, but that has nothing to do with his top notch singing. Kudos to his professionalism. I found the costume to be a bit silly, personally, but it's not a big deal either way.



Hartmann was very good as Tamino. He seemed a bit tight and nervous in the beginning but loosens up later. I can't find any fault in his performance.



They chose to present Monostatos as a cartoony villan with excessive makeup. I prefer productions that give more sympathetic version of him. His aria was good but I wonder if the need to present him negatively affected the performance negatively; I've heard his aria rendered more beautifully.



As for the overall production, it followed the traditional reading of putting Sarasato in a entirely positive light while putting the Queen in the entirely negative one. I personally prefer productions that are more sympathetic to the Queen. I am not quite sure what they were trying to do with modern clothing/classical customes in this show. Certain characters are dressed in 1950's contemprary clothing, while main characters are dressed classically. They push this hard with Papagena in particular. It is not too distracting but I did not feel it added much either.



Overall, the production is well thought-out with little overt flaws. Singers are all good, with Damrau being excellent and Pamina being a bit weak. A great, but not perfect, production.


(17 customers reviews)
Customers Rating=4.5 / 5.0

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